Wind and Window Flower
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: She lives because she has always lived. AU Ending to New Moon.


In the end Bella Swan knows that she can only rely on herself.

There is no shame in this revelation, no sickening sense of dread or desperation, it simply is. She's surprised by this; she always thought it would hurt more to think this way. Like an abyss reaching into her chest and digging through her until it reaches her core, spreading like a cancer until she is the abyss itself. No, instead it's almost a relief to think it. At last, we come to an honest answer.

It is like that moment in Arizona. When James held up the camera in a room with mirrors and told her that her mother was still alive and that Edward was never going to make it in time. She had been so terribly calm then, maybe because her mother was safe but may because of something else too. Maybe the reason she smiled at her future killer, toward her numerous reflections and the camera's red light, was simply because Edward wasn't coming.

Edward is an illusion. He is smoke and mirrors, hallucinations in dark alleys forged out of adrenaline and depression, he's hazy fading dreams in the dead of night, and he is memories. Perhaps that's all he ever was. Whatever he is or was he's gone now, his magic depleted, and no matter how many wishes she makes he isn't coming back.

So it is almost a relief when Victoria finds her and takes her to an abandoned warehouse. It is almost a relief as Victoria watches her in slight confusion as she notices that the human (only named in relation to Edward because it is Edward and not the human who must suffer) is not struggling violently for freedom but is rather sitting politely with her hands in her lap. Bella has known this moment would come for a long time and she finds that she would rather not struggle in the end.

Bella sits on the floor of the warehouse now, noting distantly the wet floor and the creaking walls. Bella waits and watches while Victoria stares at her and brings out a cellphone.

This begins one of the weirdest conversations Bella has ever had. Victoria, it turns out, is much more willing to converse with her means of vengeance than James was to converse with his meal.

"He isn't coming." Bella said first which causes Victoria's eyes to narrow.

"Your mate, you mean?" Victoria asked and then she sneers and smiles, "Of course he isn't, by the time he gets here it will be too late."

Bella considers her predator and realizes just how desperate she is. Of course Bella could tell her the truth, that Edward isn't coming at all because Edward doesn't care and even if he cared he isn't real, but something in those red eyes stops her. A desperation, a certain need. It's almost funny, Bella never would have thought of them as desperate but they really are.

Vampires are the most desperate and lost travelers in the woods because they know that they will never get out.

So Bella asks something else instead, "What will you do after you kill me?"

Victoria pauses, her smile faltering, her eyes widening slightly as she realizes the light at the end of the tunnel was nothing more than a flickering bulb in the ceiling. She composes herself rapidly enough, "You see this cellphone; I'm taping this. Just like James did, and then I will take it to the Cullen's den and leave it on the table for everyone to watch just how much you scream."

Bella waits for her to continue but that seems to be the end of it. Because that is the end of it for Victoria, Bella imagines that soon after that cell phone is left on the table there will be a pyre burning in some distant wood. So in the end Bella isn't losing at all because Victoria isn't winning, there is no way out of the woods when you're already dead.

What a relief, she thinks, it is to be human.

"You know, I'm almost glad." Bella says softly, "After all I've seen being hit by a car or mugged in an alley would be a rather anticlimactic way to go. So, in a way, I'm glad it was you. It gives closure."

"Aren't you going to scream for him?" Victoria asks suddenly, with a smile, "I want you to scream."

Bella says nothing, because Bella has learned that she is a terrible liar, and she thinks that Victoria is having a difficult enough time lying to herself without Bella's help. Victoria doesn't seem to like this; she strikes Bella across the face, not hard enough to really damage anything yet but hard enough to bleed. She still doesn't scream, instead she repositions herself back into that sitting position, eyes locked on Victoria's.

Edward had said it once, hitting the nail on the head in that indirect manner of his, her number had been up the moment she walked into that classroom all those months ago. She has just been delaying things for a little while.

"Scream, you little bitch!"

Would it make Edward feel better if she doesn't? Somehow she thinks he'd be in Victoria's vein of thought, Edward has always been reassured when she was at her most human. Fragile, suffering, when she needed him he felt he had purpose and light. Still, this video isn't for Edward, she isn't going to die for Edward, she is going to die for herself.

So through the haze of pain that comes down upon her as her face is twisted this way and that beneath Victoria's back hand so that she only sees blurs of red where the woman's hair should be she says in as clear a voice as she can muster, "No."

It isn't a desire to live that does it but perhaps it's instinct. Edward claims she has no self-preservation, that her ability to tolerate the undead proved that, she argues otherwise. Bella has challenged fate tooth and nail for her right to live, to have to face one trial after the next, with no rest in between until she is finally buried. She is a warrior in every sense of the word simply because she keeps standing long after she should have collapsed.

She hasn't taken up smoking since Edward's retreat into the netherworld but she has considered it. After the motorcycles and the cliffs and the werewolves the thought has been on her mind if only absently. There is a lighter in her pocket, sometimes she takes it out to stare at the flickering flame that is her destiny. Today her destiny is once again in her hand without even a thought, it must be habit.

All of a sudden her arm is in lodged in the vampire's throat and she begins to witness the surprising truth that vampires are flammable on the inside as well.

In the end she doesn't have to chop Victoria into tiny pieces, the woman jerks and shudders and throws herself against walls but she can't reach the burning in her throat, rapidly spreading to her heart and bones. Bella staggers back, arm retrieved from that gaping maw, and the lighter falls feebly from her poison soaked finger tips. She is laughing, even as fire licks at the insides of her bones as well, she is almost weeping with laughter.

It will take three days, a funeral pyre, and a cell phone for Bella to witness the scene for herself.

It will take a few moments thought, a number whose recipient will never respond, and the final wish of a dying vampire for her to click send and give Edward one final gift.

They are all illusions to one another in the end.

**Author's Note: Because I once read a fic where Bella lit a vampire on fire as a human and I thought that was pretty cool. Thanks for reading, reviews would be great, even if they are to tell me that there is no way that Bella versus Vampire would win because I do agree on that, this is absurd. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight**


End file.
